Princess Jellyfish

Princess jellyfish hits on so many societal subcultures its insane.  From cross-dressing to neetdom, Princess Jellyfish has it all and it is done so correctly.  Starting with Kuranosuke, he comes into Amamizukan which has a group of tennants who hate men and are also NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training).  I think an aspect of the characters I find most interesting is their each individual obsessions ranging from being obsessed with old men like Jiji, Tsukimi and Jellyfish, and Mayaya with the records of the three kingdoms.  Princess jellyfish deals with many topics again, are not socially common, nor deemed even acceptable by some to talk about from gender identity to the aforementioned neet lifestyle.

Questions

What are your ideas on the merge of virtual reality and anime?
Opinions on representation within anime and manga of pressure within the Japanese society to reproduce?

Week Three

Starting off, Abandon the Old in Tokyo was god damn harsh.  The situations were highly realistic and I could not stop reading.  The closest to the narratives portrayed that I have experienced in manga and anime would have to be from Paranoia Agent that goes into the role of paranoia in peoples everyday lives.  Abandon the Old in Tokyo I feel I will leave a lot to discuss in class and I feel it had great plots that were able to balance disturbing with realistic narrative that made me keep reading.  Manga like this are necessary and are a great example of what would be lost with heavy censorship.  This manga shows a side of reality that necessary to know about and foremost read about and experience visually and not just experience and view manga and anime as escapes of pleasure.

Week Two: Ayako

Starting off reading Ayako this week, I found the cover of this book to be amazing.  The simplicity of the typeface and the mirror of just one figure being drawn on the front, and then the grim reverse of the lower half of a hanging figure on the back.  The subtle rose tint to the cover adds a great touch too.  Coming from a background of knowing Tezuka from his work on Astroboy and one of my favorites of all time Metropolis, Ayako was a huge surprise.  Not because of its nature of dealing with the topic of Japan post WWII and the inner workings of societal relations, but the real brutality of this manga and Ayako being banished to the storeroom, and the depiction of incests role and diverse affects on families and the societal bearing.  I found the land distribution aspects interesting and the political backing great as I am not an avid reader of manga or watcher of anime relating to real world politics / happenings and the closest to hard political narratives I usually get is in Gundam and the lengthy political happenings there haha.  Being such a manga putting Ayako in despair, as a reader I just knew there was nothing that could be done for Ayako, and Tezuka created the characters really well in the fact that I felt despair throughout the manga but knew there was nothing I could do as there didn't seem to be any way for a turn around to happen.  It just did not seem the type of manga to do so.  Through the manga however there were many points I actually laughed and a lot where I just sighed due to the reality of the manga and its situations dealing with life.  

4 Part

1. The reaper is walking his pet cerberus
2. Walks and gets icecream and cerberus dies and goes to heaven because it is so good
3. reaper is walking hime and is sad
4. reaper meets a black cat and it follows him home

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